http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2017/06/wonderfully-wise-ms-wilson-plus.html
https://www.israellycool.com/…/watch-high-quality-video-of-kay-wilsons-magnificent…
British terror victim Kay Wilson’s magnificently outstanding speech indicting the capitulation of the British political establishment (as seen in certain legislation) to the haters who have been permitted to hold the disgusting Al Quds Day march.
“Thank you for taking a machete to the thicket of lies,” stated Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, in praise of the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET) at its June 14 gala in Washington, DC. Before a Grand Hyatt Hotel ballroom filled with America’s pro-Israel leaders, the exceptional speakers addressing EMET’s eleventh annual Rays of Light in the Darkness dinner indicated EMET’s rising importance as an Israel public advocate.
EMET founder and President Sarah Stern introduced the evening as “our most successful dinner yet,” a note of optimism befitting her own personal reflections on Israel’s history of triumphing over disaster. She recalled her namesake Aunt Sarah brutally massacred along with her Polish village by the Nazis in 1939. Her loss in the Holocaust manifested that before Israel’s existence “Jews were left utterly vulnerable and defenseless. Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people.”
Fifty years after the Six Day War, Stern recalled that in 1967 the “fledgling Jewish state was left totally isolated and on her own. Just 22 years after the Holocaust, it seemed that another Holocaust might be inevitable.” In her White Plains, New York, childhood home she remembered the “almost palpable tension in the air. We kept our television set on that Shabbat, something totally unheard of in my strictly Orthodox Jewish home.” “It is difficult to describe the sheer relief bordering on euphoria” after Israel’s miraculous victory, as demonstrated by her brother, who began proudly wearing his yarmulke without a baseball cap for concealment.
Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and prominent public defender of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), similarly praised EMET. In this “phenomenal organization…they go from strength to strength,” he stated, while noting the importance of the acronym EMET’s meaning in Hebrew, namely truth. “In the Middle East, lies have become the central pillar of our enemies’ efforts against us.”
Kemp decried a widespread “weakness of the West,” particularly in relation to Palestinian leaders who “want only destruction of the Jewish state.” “For decades we have tried reasoning with the Palestinians, making concessions, patronizing them, it hasn’t worked and it won’t work. They see it as weakness, and weakness provokes them.” In contrast, he offered a policy of strength, noting that “Israel cannot withdraw its forces from Judea and Samaria and have a hope of survival” and that therefore “there cannot be a two-state solution.”
Dermer’s address similarly focused on Israel’s struggle with an “alternative universe of real lies with real consequences” where “Jews are the occupiers of Judea, the Western Wall is occupied Palestinian territory.” “In this alternative universe, Iran’s path to the bomb has been blocked. In the real world, Iran’s path to a nuclear bomb has been paved.” A “propaganda campaign conducted by a master of fiction manufactured moderation and filled echo chambers with nonsense” in order to achieve President Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran.
EMET honoree Nadiya Al-Noor, a self-professing Muslim Zionist and “queer Muslim woman” with a Jewish father, discussed her own personal journey away from anti-Israel propaganda. “It saddens me that simply being a Muslim who does not hate Israel is considered award-worthy” today, she noted, but “unfortunately, antisemitism is a huge problem in the Muslim community, fueled by anti-Israel propaganda.” “College campuses these days are hotbeds of antisemitism under the guise of anti-Zionism” where once she “believed their hateful lies: Israel was an apartheid state; Israel is Nazi Germany 2.0; Zionism was racism.”
Following high-level meetings with foreign leaders, the U.S. State Department issues a “readout,” an official statement to cover and characterize the event. This week, Jared Kushner, assistant to the president, and Jason Greenblatt, special representative for international negotiations, met with Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas. At the first meeting, they were accompanied by U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman, at the second by consul general in Jerusalem Don Bome.
The language was precisely the same in both readouts – with the exception of a single sentence modified in each – and included affirmation of “their commitment to advancing President Trump’s goal of a genuine and lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians that enhances stability in the region.”
The exception was:
“The three officials discussed Israel’s priorities and potential next steps with Prime Minister Netanyahu, acknowledging the critical role Israel plays in the security of the region.”
“The three officials discussed priorities for the Palestinians and potential next steps, acknowledging the need for economic opportunities for Palestinians and major investments in the Palestinian economy.”
There are three things to learn from the readout.
First, if the administration believes that the goal is “peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians,” it is in for the same disappointment faced by its predecessors. Peace is not a negotiable property – peace is at best the outgrowth of the settlement of a dispute by war or by politics. (Machiavelli called it “the condition imposed by the winner on the loser of the last war.”) The dispute is and always was over the legitimacy and permanence of the State of Israel in the region.
The parties to the dispute are Israel and the Arab states, not Israel and the Palestinians. The crux of the dispute is the continuing refusal of Arab states – the losers of all the wars – to meet the central requirement of U.N. Resolution 242.
Termination of all claims or states of belligerency and respect for and acknowledgment of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force.
If the Arab States, including Saudi Arabia – the president’s hoped-for partner in fighting Islamic radicalization – cannot accept the legitimacy of the State of Israel, it is impossible to believe that the Palestinians – riven with dissention, weak, corrupt, and split between the dictatorial hand of an 82-year-old who is in the 11th year of a four-year term and a fascist Islamic cadre in Gaza – will be able to make a deal with the Jewish State.
Asking the Palestinians to step out ahead of the Saudis, Qataris, Omanis, and others whose states of war with Israel predate the establishment of Israel in 1948 and continue to this day is asking too much. If, on the other hand, the Sunni Arab states are serious about a regional perspective that involves Israel, ending their illegitimate holdout on Resolution 242 would give the Palestinians more confidence that Abu Mazen or his successor won’t be the next Anwar Sadat. And it will further undermine the legitimacy of Hamas in Gaza, advancing President Trump’s goal of reducing radicalism in the region.
During the last few decades, the Palestinian propaganda machine aided by anti-Israel elements in the international community have created one of the most powerful and effective emotional and psychological weapons to defeat Israel: “End the occupation.”
Although it’s a popular mantra, few understand what it means.
It could refer to what Israel conquered during the Six Day War in 1967, or what Israel acquired during the War of Independence (1948-49), or everything “from the river to the sea.”
At first, Arab Palestinian propaganda focused on Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria (the “West Bank”) as a “violation of international law,” specifically, the Fourth Geneva Convention as interpreted by the International Committee of the Red Cross. An anti-Israel, Geneva-based NGO, the International Committee of the Red Cross was the first to accuse Israel of “occupying Palestinian territory,” thus arbitrarily allotting a disputed area to one side. Because the International Committee of the Red Cross is also – uniquely – an official UN agency, its decisions are considered authoritative.
After Israel signed the Oslo Accords with Yasser Arafat (for the PLO), withdrew from Areas A and B, and along with the international community assisted the Palestinian Authority in developing its institutional structure, the focus turned to Israel’s legal and historical claims to Area C, in which all of the “settlements” are located. Experts and pundits debated the issue, but neither side was able to convince the other.
The debate over territory was important, but had limited effect because as Palestinian terrorism and incitement continued unabated and after two more withdrawals – from southern Lebanon in 2000 (which empowered Hezbollah), and from the Gaza Strip in 2005 (which empowered Hamas) – Israel was reluctant to surrender more territory. The “land for peace” mantra no longer persuaded anyone except hard-line ideologues. Even Israelis who supported the “two-state solution” were unwilling to make further concessions.
During the last decade or so, a new argument became prominent, often espoused by Israeli Jews and Progressive Jews in North America who are pro-Israel: “The occupation” is not only about territory, but is about “the Palestinian people.”
This shift to a humanitarian argument is persuasive because it is presented as a moral issue: Israel has no right to control another people, or nation – the Palestinians.
This portrays Israelis (i.e. Jews) as persecutors and Palestinians as their victims.
64% of “Palestinian” men say that women who dress provocatively deserve to be sexually harassed. 52% believe that women who are in public places at night are asking to be harassed.
57% think that a woman should marry her rapist and 47% believe that women who are honor killed for bringing “shame” to their families usually did something to deserve it.
A third of “Palestinian” men say that women who don’t wear hijabs deserve to be insulted.
And the women aren’t much better.
More “Palestinian” women than men justify sexual harassment in public places. 54% believe that a woman who was raped should marry her rapist. 41% don’t think he should be prosecuted.
43% of “Palestinian” women agree that women who are out in public at night deserve to be harassed.
Half the population knew of an honor killing that had taken place in their community in the previous year.
These are the results of a U.N. Women study which finds horrifying attitudes and behaviors toward women in the Muslim world. And which, in true U.N. fashion, attempts to blame it on Israel.
This is the “feminist” reality in the Muslim settlements in the parts of Israel occupied by the rival Islamic warlords of Hamas and Fatah. Both had their roots in the Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas is a direct link to the Islamist organization. Arafat had first invaded Israel with a Muslim Brotherhood force. He encountered two key Fatah co-founders, Abu Jihad and Abu Iyad, with the Brotherhood.
Hamas gets its backing from the Islamist terror states of Iran, Turkey and Qatar. Fatah’s Palestinian Authority is funded by Western countries. And so it has to be more circumspect. But, like ISIS, the “Palestinian” colonies are efforts to build Islamic states inside Israel. Both declare that their legal systems are based on Islamic sharia law. Their roots are in the Koran which deprives women of basic civil rights and authorizes men to rape non-Muslim women and to beat their Muslim wives.
“Men are in charge of women, because Allah has made the one of them to excel the other,” the Koran says. “And those you fear may be rebellious admonish; banish them to their couches, and beat them.”
Roughly a quarter of “Palestinians” have seen this Koranic dictum being put into action as their fathers or male relatives beat their mothers.
Islam declares that a woman suffers from a “deficiency in her intelligence” so that it takes two female witnesses to equal one male witness. Women in Islam are considered good for only one thing.
The current policy of the PA leadership is to avoid alienating the Trump administration by continuing to pretend that Abbas and his cronies are serious about achieving peace with Israel. This is why Abbas’s representatives are careful not to criticize Trump or his envoys.
When Israel does not comply with their list of demands, the Palestinians will accuse it of “destroying” the peace process. Worse still, the Palestinians will use this charge as an excuse to redouble their terror against Israelis. The Palestinian claim, as always, will be that they are being forced to resort to terrorism in light of the failure of yet another US-sponsored peace process.
No doubt, Abbas cannot find it within himself to clarify to the American envoys that he lacks a mandate from his people to make any step toward peace with Israel. Abbas knows, even if the American representatives do not, that any move in that direction would end his career, and very possibly his life. Abbas also does not wish to go down in Palestinian history as the treacherous leader who “sold out to the Jews.” Moreover, someone can come along later and say, quite correctly, that as Abbas has exceeded his legitimate term in office, any deal he makes is illegal and illegitimate.
US envoys Jason Greenblatt and Jared Kushner, who met this week in Jerusalem and Ramallah with Israeli and Palestinian Authority (PA) officials to discuss reviving the peace process, have discovered what previous US Middle East envoys learned in the past two decades — that the PA has not, cannot, and will not change.
During their meeting in Ramallah with PA President Mahmoud Abbas, the two US emissaries were told that the Palestinians will not accept anything less than an independent state along on the pre-1967 lines with East Jerusalem as its capital.Abbas also made it clear that he has no intention to make concessions on the “right of return” for Palestinian “refugees.” This means he wants a Palestinian state next to Israel while flooding Israel with millions of Palestinian “refugees” and turning it, too, into another Palestinian state.
At the meeting, Abbas also reiterated his demand that Israel release all Palestinian prisoners, including convicted murderers with Jewish blood on their hands, as part of any peace agreement. The release of terrorists in the past has only resulted in increased terrorism against Israel.
According to Abbas’s spokesperson, Nabil Abu Rudaineh, the PA president told Kushner and Greenblatt that a “just and comprehensive peace should be based on all United Nations resolutions (pertaining to the Israeli-Arab conflict) and the (2002) Arab Peace Initiative.” Translation: Israel must withdraw to the indefensible pre-1967 lines and allow armed Palestinian factions to sit on the hilltops overlooking Ben Gurion Airport and Tel Aviv.
OH PULEEZ! THERE THEY GO AGAIN…THIS TIME SENDING A TOTAL TYRO JARED KUSHNER TO PROCESS PEACE BASED ON FALSE ASSUMPTIONS….RSK
WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser, Jared Kushner, met Wednesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his senior advisers to try to advance U.S. efforts to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
Mr. Kushner, who was joined by Jason Greenblatt, the president’s top representative on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, discussed with the prime minister “potential next steps” in the effort to establish peace between Israel and the Palestinians, according to a White House statement.
Mr. Kushner and the Israeli officials “underscored that forging peace will take time” and emphasized the “importance of doing everything possible to create an environment conducive to peacemaking,” the White House said.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, right, meeting with Mr. Kushner in Ramallah, West Bank, on Wednesday. Photo: Thaer Ghanaim/Palestinian Press Office/Getty Images
In a televised welcome of Mr. Kushner, Mr. Netanyahu said the meeting was an “opportunity to pursue our common goals of security, prosperity and peace,” and added: “Jared, I welcome you here in that spirit.”
Mr. Kushner responded: “The president sends his best regards, and it’s an honor to be here with you.”
Mr. Netanyahu also praised the president’s trip to Israel last month, saying Mr. Trump left an “indelible impression on the people of Israel.”
Messrs. Kushner and Greenblatt also met Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his senior advisers in the West Bank city of Ramallah. When they return to Washington, they will brief the president, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster and talk “next steps,” the White House said.
The trip marks the White House’s first major follow-up to Mr. Trump’s trip to the region last month and suggests Mr. Kushner’s policy portfolio isn’t shrinking despite scrutiny by federal investigators into his past meetings with Russian officials. CONTINUE AT SITE
A definite gain of Israel’s new settlement policy is that it seems to have taken the settlement issue off the boil not just with the Trump administration but also with other friendly foreign governments. Among the losses, thanks to the Judea and Samaria Settlement Regulation Law, is UN Security Council Resolution 2334 of December 23, 2016, which vehemently denounced all Israeli settlement activity.
During March 2017, a delegation appointed by Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu held lengthy discussions in Washington with the Trump administration over construction in the Israeli settlements in Judea and Samaria (aka the “West Bank”). No summary of those discussions was published, but on March 30 the security cabinet of the Israeli government informed the media that it had drawn up guidelines limiting further construction. Now, however, Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman — who has direct responsibility for approving all such construction plans — has confirmed that “Israel is coordinating its settlement construction with the White House.”
He specified that “while coordination is not happening on the level of every ’10 [houses],’ there is general understanding between Jerusalem and Washington about acceptable levels of construction in the West Bank.” This would explain why, whereas under the Obama administration any Israeli announcement about even a small number of housing units would provoke ritual squeaks of protest from U.S. officials, the recent announcements of larger numbers have escaped loud censure.
It should be noted that such announcements commonly give an exaggerated impression of the scale of construction. This is because Israeli urban planning involves a series of stages of approval before actual construction goes ahead. Thus the most recent announcement, billed as “building at the highest level since 1992,” aggregates plans at various stages of approval, some of which were included in earlier announcements. To add together all such figures over a long period would therefore be mistaken because of multiple counting of the same individual housing units.
The new settlement policy was released to various media, such as here, where it is stated:
“Israel, according to the security cabinet decision, will — as much as possible — only permit building within the existing construction lines of the settlements… In areas where this is not possible because there is no more available land inside the settlements, construction will take place close to the existing construction line. Where this too is impossible because of issues of land ownership, or security or topographic considerations, Israel will build as close to the existing settlement as possible… Israel also committed itself not to permit the establishment of new wildcat outposts.”
Several comments are in order. First, this is more or less what all Israeli governments did after the signing of the “Oslo Accords” of 1993 and 1995 and up to the middle of 2016. Second, the details are spelled out far more minutely than in any previous Israeli official statement. Third, the decision applies equally to all settlements whatsoever, whereas previous discussions might distinguish between settlements within or beyond Israel’s security barrier or between the main “settlement blocks” and “outlying settlements.” (Even the two major opposition parties in the Israeli parliament — the Labor Party and Yesh Atid — agree with the government that the settlement blocks should be kept by Israel in any final agreement with the Palestinians.)
On the other hand, two recent exceptions to that policy will be retained. One is the proposed construction of Amihai. This is an entirely new settlement, the first since 1992; it is to be inhabited by the 40 families expelled on February 1-2, 2017 from Amona, the wildcat outpost that they had set up back in 1995 without government permission and on land privately owned by Palestinians. (The expulsion was long delayed for various reasons, most recently because the settlers produced documents of purchase of the land, which were proven false in 2014.) The construction of Amihai was ratified by the security cabinet at the same meeting on March 30, but because Netanyahu had promised the settlers a new settlement at the time of their evacuation it was treated as a matter that preceded the discussions with the Trump administration. (The name “Amihai” itself was coined by the settlers only in May 2017.)
The other exception is the so-called “Judea and Samaria Settlement Regulation Law,” passed by the Israeli parliament on February 4, 2017 after long discussions that started in mid-2016 and that were provoked precisely by the case of Amona. The law addresses land occupied by settlers either within or outside officially created settlements, but which was subsequently found to be privately owned by Palestinians. As far back as 1979, Israel’s Supreme Court ruled that settlements could not be built on such land. The law seeks to permit compulsory acquisition of the land while compensating the owners (either financially or with state land elsewhere) if occupation of the land occurred “in good faith” (i.e., without prior knowledge of Palestinian ownership) or if the Israeli state had de facto assisted the occupation (e.g., by connecting buildings to the water or electricity grid). It is widely expected that the law itself will be struck down by the Supreme Court.
I was honored and privileged to be asked by Robert Avrech of Seraphic Secret to undertake the Ariel Avrech Memorial Lecture in memory of his son Ariel, who passed away at an early age.
Robert and Karen are incredible people who have managed to transmute their loss into a search for meaning. And it was a great responsibility to be part of that and to follow speakers like David Horowitz and Larry Elder who have delivered the lecture in the past. It was also a pleasure to meet up with fellow bloggers from Bookworm Room and Rob from Joshuapundit, as well as having colleague Mark Tapson and Kyle Kyllan, producer of The Enemies Within. And thank you also to those who came from as far away as Marin County and Orange County. I was happy to meet everyone and privileged to be able to participate in this event.
The following is the text of my remarks. You can see the video above. My speech begin after opening remarks by Robert, Karen and a friend of Ariel’s who shared some beautiful memories of him with us.
Year after year has passed and once again we are gathered here to remember an incredible young man. I have participated in these memorials remotely by watching them from afar. It’s an honor and also a great responsibility to stand here and to speak to you.
This day is a tribute to the impact that Ariel Avrech had on his community and that his parents continue to have on all of us.
Sooner or later we all pass on. The day will come when we all have a tombstone in some quiet place. When we are only a memory. We live on in two ways.
We continue on in the spiritual realm in the presence of G-d. And we live on here in the memory of our friends and our loved ones. And in the positive impact that we make through them.
The conversations you have with your children will echo in the conversations they have with theirs. The wisdom you learned from your parents is a faint echo of men and women whose names have been forgotten, but who were your ancestors thousands of years ago stretching back all the way to Sinai.
One day, hundreds of years from now, a descendant you will never meet, will pass on an echo of yours into a distant generation. And a part of you will live on in his words and the impact that they make.
As Jews, we know that we are a people of the book. But before much of the Oral Torah, the Torah she’Baal peh was set down, it was passed on through word of mouth.
We are a people perpetually in conversation with each other. Thank you for coming to join us in this conversation. There are many kinds of conversations. And there’s a saying.
Anti-Semitism has hit unprecedented levels. Defending Israel is harder than ever
Small minds talk about people. Great minds speak about ideas. It is a tribute to Ariel and to his parents, Robert and Karen, that their conversation is about ideas. And that Ariel’s conversations, the words that echo, are of ideas.
“Look in the Thesaurus under greatness — you get importance magnitude fame, size, immensity. Such are the values of our culture.” That was a quote that Ariel carried around with him.
We know how different his values were. And those values live on through the way that we remember him.
Ariel is no longer with us. But he is changing the world. And he is changing all of us. In his honor and memory, I want to speak about a world that he never saw. But which, through us, he is having an impact on.
Our world of today.
When Ariel passed away, the world was on the verge of the major challenges we face today.
Since then things have gotten much worse.
Anti-Semitism has hit unprecedented levels. Defending Israel is harder than ever. But why is that?
It’s 2017. Gay marriage is legal. Everything is more multicultural than ever. Everyone is tolerant of everything. Except the things they’re intolerant of.
If Anti-Semitism were just a garden variety bigotry, then things should be better.
And if Israel is being attacked because of the so-called Occupation, then its situation should be much better than it was since 1967. Look how many peace deals Israel has made and how much territory it’s given away.
Israel should be much more popular now. It should be much easier to be pro-Israel now than it was after the Six Day War.
So why doesn’t it work that way? Why instead does it seem as if the more tolerant society gets, the more intolerant of Jews it becomes? Why are Jews fleeing some of the most multicultural cities in Europe? Why is Berkeley a safe space for everyone except Jews?
Why is the anti-Israel movement much stronger after all of Israel’s efforts to make peace than it was when Israel refused to negotiate with the PLO?
Why is everything backward for the Jews?
When we try to do the things we’re supposed to do, when we work for a more tolerant society, when we try to appease our enemies, things get worse instead of better.
What we’re doing isn’t working.
The fact that it’s 2017 and I’m giving a speech about how to fight anti-Semitism and defend Israel shows it isn’t working.
The strategies we learned have failed. And we need to talk about why they failed.
And, taking a page from George from Seinfeld, I’m going to suggest that what we should be doing is the opposite of what we think we should be doing.
Anti-Semitism has existed since there were Jews
And for the same reason.
Instead of doing all the things that we think will make people like us, we should be true to ourselves. And then we might actually be liked. And more importantly, we’ll deserve to be liked.
I’m not going to devote this speech to going on about how terrible those who hate us are. If you’re sitting in this room, you already know that. I’m not here to talk about the enemies of the Jews. I’m here to talk about the Jews.
We’re a minority. That means we’re other directed. We’re insecure. We’re neurotic. We’re self-conscious. We care what everyone on the outside thinks of us.
And when we talk about anti-Semitism or Israel, we focus on them. Not us.
Why do they hate us? Why don’t they like us? Why is the world so unfair to us?
https://www.wsj.com/articles/notable-quotable-a-lesson-of-the-1967-war-1497998869
The Hudson Institute’s Michael Doran, testifying before the U.N. Security Council about the 50th anniversary of the Six Day War, June 20:
May I again remind you of the example of [Egypt’s] Gamal Abdel Nasser ? A revisionist school of historiography claims that he never wanted war in 1967. His best military units were bogged down in Yemen, his economy was a shambles, and his relations with Jordan and Syria, his putative allies, were abysmal. Why would a leader in such a precarious position behave so recklessly?
The revisionists have much of the story right but they miss a crucial factor. Nasser was applying lessons that he learned a decade earlier, during the Suez Crisis. Then, as in 1967, he had precipitated a war that he could not possibly win militarily, but which he believed he could win politically, because, he gambled, the superpowers and the United Nations would intercede on his behalf. In 1956, that proved a very smart bet. In 1967, however, it utterly failed—with disastrous consequences for Egypt—to say nothing of the Palestinians. How much better would it have been for all parties if, back in 1956, the United Nations had insisted that, in return for an Israeli withdrawal from Egyptian territory, Nasser must grant Israel meaningful security guarantees?
The key lesson of 1967 war is that peace is best achieved not by United Nations intercession but by facilitating direct negotiations between the parties.
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